That being said, the placebo effect is strong. When I was a little kid, I was only allowed to move from bed to the couch once I’d turned the corner on my illness but wasn’t yet ready to go back to school. To this day I move to the couch when sick, and it makes me feel better even though the only plausible mechanism is my own head. I bet a lot of colas given for upset stomachs are in the same category.
My go to brand, Seagram’s, contains “natural flavors”. Content and concentration unspecified.
"They do buy actual ginger, but then what they do is they boil it in ethanol, and that essentially destroys any nutritional or medicinal benefits," Mark Canofari said, adding that Canada Dry uses a ginger concentrate. "One drop fills 70 cans [...] and a drop is .05 ml. So that's how little, even of the concentrate, is actually in one drink."
https://www.foodandwine.com/news/ginger-ale-canada-dry-medic...
These days, Lucozade Sport (in multiple flavours) has taken over, but being "isotonic", presumably has various salts.
I see that nowdays even the sugar-free lucozade is advertised as an energy drink, I'm not sure quite how that works, though!
However, in my experience Coke/Pepsi (phosphoric acid) and ginger beer/ale (ginger extract) may work better as anti-nausea medicines.
Canada Dry was sued for their Ginger Ale not containing "real ginger" (as per the label), but I think it still contains something like ginger extract. The anti-nausea effects may be one reason airlines serve ginger ale as an in-flight beverage.